


Lighthouse

by KendylGirl



Series: The Alchemy of Butterflies [13]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Awkwardness, Insecurity, M/M, Mild Angst, Misunderstandings, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: It’s festival time in Cannes, but Tim doesn’t feel like celebrating.





	Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to her beta powers, Willowbrooke is an oracle who seems to know exactly what images and video clips will set my evil mind working. This time, it involved Tim in conversation with Adrien Brody at an after party for _Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,_ one in which he (if my non-existent lipreading skills are accurate) makes, shall we say, a candid confession of wrongdoing.

Shit.

I scan the room, but he’s nowhere, and he’s hard to miss.

I spin around with my hands on my hips, my stomach wrapped around my windpipe. _He said he couldn’t come.That’s what he said.So how was I supposed to know?_

And I had _begged_ him to come.

“Come on, just _one_ day?For me?”I dipped my head so that my hair fell down and brushed the face of the phone, and I had glanced up through my lashes to see him pressing his lips together, regret plain in the ocean of his eyes.“I’m sorry, Timmy, I really am.You know I’d love to be there with you, but I just don’t think I can swing it.Rehearsals are just getting started here.”His voice had shrunken with each sentence, exasperation trailing guilt down to his toes.

“But you’re so close now—almost the same time zone!How hard would it be?”I puckered my lips and wiped my eye.I was playing dirty, and I knew it.But I just wanted to see him again.

Which makes me a fucking asshole, right out of the gate.I know that.This is the selfless guy who dropped everything to fly to Hungary to prop me up.He’d stayed for nearly a week until he felt assured that I had crawled out of my slump.And he’d spoiled me terribly, spending days in a frenzy while I was on set, feverishly studying his own scripts and making phone calls and answering emails, all so that he could spend every night with me, uninterrupted.

When I complained about missing home, he found a pizza shop that does a mean New York style pie, and we slumped on the couch and got crumbs all over our clothes and cued up a marathon of _Trading Spaces_ and mumbled about bad painting and hideous color choices, and when I laid my head on his stomach and gradually drifted off to sleep, I could’ve sworn that I’d awaken in the morning in my very own bed. 

When I was tense and grouchy, he bought massage oil scented in lavender and had worked it into the achy muscles on my arms and my back with warm and careful hands until I would all but melt into the mattress, and when he had reduced me to an incoherent mess, he finally would turn me over and massage my hamstrings as he bent down to wrap his tongue around me and swallow me down to the root, milking every drop out of me until I forgot what language was and could only communicate in a Morse code of groans and whimpers for hours after. 

When I was emotionally exhausted from a day of intense scenes, ones full of aggression and fear, ones I had to repeat over and over again, he didn’t say a word, just took my hand and led me into the bathroom to the bath he’d drawn.He took off my clothes with care, unwrapping me like a gift whose paper you’re trying to save for next year, kissed my cheek, and held me steady while I stepped in and sank into the steamy waters.Then, he fitted my earbuds in and left me alone to decompress to a classical playlist he’d put together.

He made me whole again every day, and how do I thank him?I make him feel like shit for not compromising one more of his obligations. _Nice work, Tim.Really classy_.

I whip out my phone to text him. _This is stupid!_ _Please come back_.

Nothing.

_You can’t seriously be mad!_

Blank.

_I’m sorry, all right?Please, Armie, I didn’t mean it.Don’t be angry!_

I actually hold my phone up to the ceiling as if the reason why its face is black and empty is the reception.

_Fuck me_.

I lean over the bar and order a rum and Coke.It’s my third.I tell myself it’s fine.I slump down in a seat next to some drunk dude who looks like Jack Black on his worst day.He’s babbling to himself about art and darkness, just before he hiccups and dribbles brown liquid down his chin. _Jesus_.

I slump forward and cover my eyes.So this is where I am—at a party full of pretentious asshats who don’t know shit about real emotion and only want to be seen, want to sell the lie that they are incisive and erudite about film and culture.Obviously I love movies, or I wouldn’t be here at all.I love how camera angles convey mood, how colors define character, how actors choose the exact right play for a scene from a dizzying amount of choices.This shit gets _inside_ me on a level I can’t describe.But right now, all of it feels like meaningless bullshit because the smartest and most natural artist I know, the one person who could make all of this have a shred of meaning and enjoyment for me, has ghosted.

In my defense, though, no part of this went as I imagined it would.

I had no way of knowing that I’d get so hard into it, pushing back for some stupid reason against a silver-haired _Vanity Fair_ exec who had pontificated to a small circle of us that anyone under thirty had too little life experience to understand real suffering or any serious emotion.It was such an outrageous display of idiocy, I just couldn’t stop myself.I had clutched my glass tighter, my fingers sliding in the condensation, and leaned toward him.“You want to give me that again?I mean, don’t you have too _much_ life experience to exhibit that degree of shortsightedness?”

He’d waved his furry hand in my face.“Yeah, I know all you actors think you have an _in_ with every fucking _feeling_ , but come on, what’s some twenty-year-old little shit going to tell me about pain or love?I mean, what the fuck do any of you really _know_?”

As more people seemed to close in on our group, I could feel the adrenaline shoot through my veins like a poison.I should’ve shut up and walked away, gone outside to look at the water, anything else.“I know that suffering and joy do not come with an age stamp.I know that every person on this planet has something to teach us, if only we are not deaf to their voices.”

He actually reached over and patted my shoulder in the most demeaning way possible.“Sure, kid.That new-age crap sells magazines and gets people to see shitty films, but I’m not buying it.”

I shrugged him off.“Look, man, I know I have a lot to learn, and I am open to it.That’s fine.I look forward to it, but to have you just write off an entire group of people as worthless for some surface, arbitrary reason is the epitome of ignorance, and it is that very kind of lazy thinking which threatens to stagnate this whole profession.”My face was hot and itchy, and the words just poured out of me, fueled by indignation and alcohol and that nagging desperation that claws at the fringes my mind that makes me want to gain validation from pompous dickheads I don’t even know.“Enlightenment doesn’t operate on a schedule, and plenty of people younger than me have suffered far more than you could ever conceive.”

He’d smirked, practically rolled his eyes, and leaned past me to put his empty glass on a table.It was then that I had felt another hand clap onto my shoulder, and I exploded.I twisted viciously and threw my arms in the air, sloshing my drink in an arc.“Get the fuck _off_ me!”But when I spun around, breathing hard through my nose, ready to attack, it was I who got punched in the gut. 

Holding his arm in the air, mid-retreat, wearing a blanched look of hollowed dismay that I pray I’ll never see again in my life, was Armie.

It was as if someone ripped a needle across the record groove.

I couldn’t move.It was too big a swerve, and I stumbled backward and just stared at him.As the rest of the people began to recognize him, the air shifted, and they drifted away a few steps, awkwardly staring at spots on the wall, all under the guise of giving us privacy, but their traitorous ears were still glued to every juicy minute.I still hadn’t said a word, and they clearly took that strained silence to mean something malicious.

So did Armie.

But it wasn’t.Of _course_ it wasn’t, not at all.I simply couldn’t switch gears so quickly, and every wrong signal I could ever send was broadcast in the space of those few seconds.Armie’s face hardened, and I saw all the sweetness and heartfelt enthusiasm that must have carried him in here turn brittle and die.

“Yeah, sure.My mistake,” he’d barked, eyes turning down and away from me.“Forget it.Sorry to interrupt.”

His shoulders had rounded as he’d pivoted toward the door.It was a move I’d seen him do dozens of times whenever he feels conspicuous and on display and wants to make himself smaller, when he wants to sink out of the stratosphere and hide in the cold soup of average people.

I _hate_ when he does that. 

I remember going up to him at the party after the Oscars last year during one of the few moments that he and I had together that was not overtaken by swells of aggressive laughter and swishes of a dangerously coiffed ponytail, and only because my mom had drug Elizabeth to the ladies room with her.(To this day, I swear that she had winked at me as she’d latched onto a bony elbow and disappeared in the crowd, but she still denies it.)It was right after Liz had picked nonexistent lint from his back, looked him up and down, and told him that his gorgeous burgundy suit made him look like a lounge singer, tacking on a cackle at the end to celebrate her own cleverness.I’d watched his face pink up, watched the sparkle in his eyes fizzle out, watched his broad shoulders curl inward as he bent to put his empty glass on a tray.

I remember feeling this growl in my throat just before I went up to him, crowded right up in his face so that my chest was touching his, and he had angled his neck back so he could focus his eyes on me. _God_.They looked puffy, reddened. _Is he tired?Buzzed?_ No, too easy.He had given me a lopsided smile, uncertain what I was up to, but as his gaze had sunk into mine, the pretense evaporated, and I saw the blatant sadness there like layers of sediment, one upon the other, building up on his face.I wondered how long it would be before they hardened into stone and made him unrecognizable.I wondered if anyone else would even notice.

I put my hands on both his shoulders, my eyes never leaving his.“No.You don’t do that,” I had whispered to him.He took a sudden breath but didn’t respond.“You don’t sink down to our level.You wait for the world to come up to you.You’re a beacon.”

His lips had twisted wryly.“What, like a lighthouse?”Then, he huffed a humorless laugh.“Standing by myself on a cliff—yeah, maybe you’re onto something there.”

I pushed his shoulders back until I could feel his muscles take over and correct his posture.“You’re never alone.”My voice was far more desperate than I had intended.Suddenly I wasn’t talking about any of this.I pinned him with my eyes, praying he would understand me, scared to death that he would.“And if you weren’t standing there, how would I ever find my way home?”

His mouth had opened like he was going to say something, and it drew my gaze down to it, and suddenly I felt hot and my suit was choking me and I dug my fingers into his shoulders. _Shit._ I was going to do it.I was going to tell him—I mean, fuck it, he had to have guessed by now, anyway, right? And this was one of the last nights we’d get to spend together, and he _deserved_ to hear it, I thought.He deserved to know that he was all I could think about, how my skin felt cold all the time because his hands weren’t on it the way they had been in Italy, and I couldn’t stand to face endless years after this remembering how soft his hair had been against my nose and never get to tell him.

I had looked up at him again, and his eyes widened.He looked afraid, like on some level he knew, or maybe _wanted_ to know, but was not willing to allow himself the pleasure of it. _It’s all right_ , I pleaded with him silently, _I’m here.This is how we do this_.“Armie, I—“

And from behind me sailed a shrill, “How about another drink, boys?” drowning me out, and a manicured hand pulled him out of my grasp.I had watched him stumble to the bar.He’d held my eyes, with that same sad look in his, the lonely man on a shore that no one could reach, and I fought with myself not to turn to my mother and sob like a baby in her arms.

“Quite a night, huh?”

I jumped and looked across the table where Adrien Brody had sunk into the seat next to Drunk Jack Black.

“Hey.”

He smiled evenly at me.“I never got a chance to say good-bye to you in Angoulême.Everything go all right for you there?”

I nodded.“Sure, sure.It was a really good experience.”

He took a swallow of his beer.“Wes is a pro with some killer vision.Makes it all go smoother for the rest of us.”

I gave him a tight-lipped smile.He’s a great guy, and I would love someday to grill him about _The Pianist_ , but right now I was absolutely not in the mood for small talk.

“I love him!Hessaagreatest…jus’ LOVE ‘em!”This helpful addition bubbles out of Drunk Jack Black, along with a hiccup and a brush of both his hands at his long locks.

Adrien and I lock eyes, and his widen comically.I can’t help but chuckle and lean forward, laying my wrists on my knees so that my hands dangle over the edge of the table.“Sorry, I…I’m not very good company right now.It’s…”I don’t even know what to say.I’m sure he couldn’t care less about my personal drama.

But he sits forward, too, plants an elbow on his thigh and strokes his chin.“Yeah, I could see something was off with you.”He glanced around and leaned forward a little more.“I, uh…I thought I saw Armie around here earlier.”He lets it hang out there, lets me decide if he’s out of line.

My cheeks heat, and I stare at the table, stroke at my neck because suddenly I feel like I have a sign strapped to my back that reads RAGING ASSHOLE.“Yeah, I, um…”

Drunk Jack Black sits forward, too, as if this concerns him.“I bought a new appliance.It’s a Sub-Zero,” he gushes to me, then turns to Adrien.“It has a bottom freezer!It’s so great…”

Adrien looks at me steadily, just grips his jaw and waits patiently.

I can’t take it.“Yeah, I asked him to come, fucking begged him, and when he got here…”I sigh and throw my hands forward as if somehow they can pull the words out of my face, and my tongue won’t have to untie itself, “I made him feel unwelcome…I mean, _I_ _fucked up_.”I brush my hand through my hair to keep tears from welling up in the aftermath.“Now I…I just don’t know what to _do_.”

“Did he leave?”

“Don’t know.Won’t answer my texts.”I glance at my offending device with loathing, giving it one last chance to redeem itself.

“Would you’ve left?”

Good question.“I guess I would’ve thought about it, but if _he_ was here, I doubt it.”

Adrien takes in the room as he considers this.“Tried looking for him?”

My hands flop open like I’m begging for a handout.“I have no idea where to look.”

He nods thoughtfully. “Well, here’s what I know:if someone’s going to come all the way here…if he took time off for it…it had to be important to him.I’d say you got a lot to work with, know what I mean?”His wrist ticks back and forth as he talks, and his palm gestures toward me.“You know him best, Tim.Where do you think he’d go?”

I stare at the votive candles and glassware on the table. _Well, he’d stay away from the street—too many cameras, too many eyes.Would he go down to the beach?Maybe.The water always soothes him.But his feelings are hurt, so he’d keep himself apart.What would he need right now?Perspective, an altered view.  He’d go up.  Where's "up" around here?The back terrace, away from the pool.Yes!_

I look up quickly at Adrien, who’s watching me with enigmatic eyes.“I think I need to take a walk.”I jump up from my seat and move around the table toward him.“Thanks, man, really.I appreciate…just _thank_ you.”

His lips curl in a good-natured smile.“Nothing I wouldn’t do for a fellow alum.Hell, I sucked at statistics, too.”He winks at me, gives me a fist bump, and I’m gone.

 

* * *

 

The wind is really whipping up here, which is probably why the party has largely avoided its height and its relative darkness.The lights on the water are glimmering in the regular chop of waves that chase each other to the shore.

He is at the end of the terrace, gripping the railing, face turned to the sky. 

I stop about twenty feet away.“You find the north star yet?”

His muscles tense like the rip of a drawstring, causing him to bend further over the rail.He doesn’t answer.

“Because I did, finally.”

He still doesn’t turn around, so I move the rest of the way to stand next to him, my gaze on the water.I clear my throat.“I’m sorry, Armie.You know that was just a misunderstanding, right?I got so carried away, and I know I shouldn’t, but that guy just pissed me off _so bad_ …”

Armie is dangerously quiet. _This is not good_.After a few seconds, I muster the courage to look over at him.

God, I had dreaded being confronted by his twitching jaw and his eyes that, when they’re delivering messages for his anger, can cut glass.I hate when his face is hardened and his mouth disappears in a deadly line.That is the absolute worst.

_Oh, wait.No, it isn’t_.

When I look over at him, his eyes are pinched shut, chin dipped to his chest, and his mouth is slack.He finally turns toward me, and he looks blank, defeated, like a soldier out of bullets who hears the cocking of a pistol behind his head.

“Do you want to leave me now?”

The question is like an elbow to the face.“What the… _no_ , I… _fuck no_ , of course I don’t!Why would you even _ask_ me that?”

He is fixated on a spot over my shoulder.“You can tell me.Just go ahead and tell me.”He sounds like a robot.“I need to know.I want to know.”

“Armie, seriously, _come on_ , this is so—“It’s not until I lay my hand on his cheek that he seems to shudder and finally focus on my eyes.I look back and forth between his, at the sadness that circles there.I keep my voice steady to let him rebalance on solid ground.“I was hyped up and on my way to drunk, and you were unfortunate enough to agree to do yet another _amazing_ thing for me and happened to walk right into the middle of _me_ acting like a shithead.That’s _all_.”I drag my hands down his arms and gather up both his hands, and he stares at me almost fearfully.“Do you believe me?”

After a moment, he nods.

“Do you forgive me?”

He nods again, quicker this time.

I bite my lip.“Do you love me?”

That gets me a small smile.“Yeah, I do,” he whispers.

I throw myself at him, drag him into my arms, as tight as I can manage.“Jesus, you smell good,” I mumble into his chest, and I feel him chuckle.He dips his head to kiss me, and I grab onto the collar of the leather jacket he wears and lean up on my tiptoes to meet him, pulling at his lips with mine, tugging at him with passes of my tongue, to try to tuck as much of him inside me as I can.

His hands float up to cup my cheeks, and he kisses them and my lips in random patterns, cheekbone to cupid’s bow to temple.He sighs and rests his forehead on mine, and I hold his wrists, massage them slightly.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” he murmurs.

I lean back and look at him, eyebrows falling into my line of vision.“Huh?What for?”

He presses his lips together and his head droops a notch.His fingers draw gentle circles around my scalp.“I really…I overreacted.I mean, I think I knew you weren’t talking to me back there, but it just…”He winces slightly.“It just fed right into my fear—no, my absolute _certainty—_ that you’re going to wake up some day and wonder what the hell you were thinking, wanting to be with someone like me, and you’re going to tell me to fuck off.”

I stare hard into his eyes, and my grip on his wrists becomes a painful clench.“If you _ever_ say anything that ridiculous to me _ever again_ , I _will_ tell you to fuck off.”I angle forward and run my tongue along the seam of his lips.“Do we understand each other?”

He practically picks me up against the rail to kiss me deeply, one hand at the base of my spine, one at the base of my skull, every part of me drawing him into my pores, branding myself with the imprint of his tongue and his fingers and his teeth.I can feel his heart beat against my chest, feel its steady rhythm, the one I set my whole world to, the acceleration of my very own blood.But it’s not until I hear the soft groan rumble inside his throat that I feel like I’m going to lose control again, that I’m going to forget where I am and let myself go completely.

We force ourselves to break apart, each panting slightly, grinning, soft eyes and fingers that won’t quite leave the other, and finally decide to make our way back through the throngs and head to my hotel.His hand clasps tightly to mine, and as I reach the edge of the stairs, I see his bottom lip pout slightly.“Hey, how did you know where to find me?”

I look down at our joined hands and give him a slow smile.“Simple.I just followed the light, right into shore.”

He stops walking and stares at me, his eyes filled with what I know is love but right at this moment looks so much like gratitude. His grip on my hand tightens.“Was that enough?”

I turn into him, lay my free hand on his stomach.“It lets me know I’m home, safe and sound, no matter where I am.It’s always enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had no idea until I was formulating this story that Adrien Brody is American, let alone that he is a New Yorker who graduated from the same high school as Mr. Chalamet (about 22 years prior).
> 
> Full disclosure, here’s how insane I am: I actually looked up articles about this Vanity Fair party to find out where it took place, then studied images of it so I could figure out where a plausible place would be for Armie to go to be alone. Ok, and I may have studied the video clips to make a plausible _Mystery Science Theatre_ version of what Drunk Jack Black said. I may not be the most talented writer in any room, but dang it, I’m committed, people! :)
> 
> By the way, if I am foolish for not knowing who Drunk Jack Black really is and you’re a fan of his, my deepest apologies!


End file.
